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Campaign to declare Edinburgh's first saint set for Zimbabwe

The leader of a campaign to have an Edinburgh factory worker made a saint has pledged to take his cause to Zimbabwe.

Fr Richard Reid, of St Patrick's RC Church on the Cowgate, will be travelling to the troubled African nation in February to run a priest training centre.

The appointment of 35-year-old Fr Reid, who had just begun studying for a doctorate in Belgium, has come as a huge shock to the tight-knit community at St Patrick's.

But Fr Reid – who oversaw the exhumation and reburial of Margaret Sinclair, who is set to become Edinburgh's first saint, in the church grounds and also produced a film about her life – said he was excited by the challenge.

Fr Reid last visited the Redemptorist Order Mission in Harare, the Zimbabwean capital, in August 2006, although the political situation in the country has since become increasingly unstable under Robert Mugabe's brutal regime.

Full story at the Edinburgh Evening News.